


timbers we place by hand

by lissomelle



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Casually working up to domesticity, Coda, F/M, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lissomelle/pseuds/lissomelle
Summary: She’s used to thinking of him as all open seams, split knuckles, split lips, split scalp. He still is, in a way. The sight of him is a wound that won’t close.





	timbers we place by hand

**Author's Note:**

> This was, uh. Going to be angstier when I first started. BEST LAID PLANS. No character death warnings required if you know Frank's backstory.
> 
> Many thanks to my friend Abbey ([songandsilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songandsilence)) for capslocking about Frank and Karen with me and inadvertently motivating me to get this done. You're an angel without wings. ♥

 

**timbers we place by hand**

  

 

 

The front door won’t shut.

Less than a year of living in a doorman building, and the auto-lock for the entrance is useless because the goddamn door won’t shut all the way. Karen tries coaxing it into place, nudging and wriggling the doorjamb. No good. Sighing, she’s got the number for the front desk pulled up on her phone when the thought appears, unbidden, that this might have been the point. To catch her on the stoop, distracted.

She looks up sharply, sweeping her gaze from left to right and sliding a hand into her bag.

There’s no one. Neither foe nor friend.

Absently, she touches her free hand to the butterfly bandage still holding together the cut on her forehead, the twinge of pain grounding her. There’s no one coming, she reminds herself, half-embarrassed at the unbidden swell of hope in her chest.

(She caught the news about Billy Russo on television — nothing about the Punisher. Homeland has a habit of disappearing people; she can only hope that he made it out of the city, maybe hit the road. She doesn’t want to think the alternative may be why he didn’t say goodbye.)

She keeps her gun within arm’s reach even after she gets home.

 

 

 

She hasn't journaled in years but she starts writing in the back of an old notebook, one almost filled to the brim with old notes for finished articles yet still holding a cache of blank pages in the back.

It’s not much, just a stray line whenever she’s up late nursing a beer or three.

_I’m not religious, but sometimes I say a quick prayer when I hear they’ve dredged up another body from the Hudson._

_I haven’t stopped hoping there’s an after._

_Tomorrow I’m going to pick up my dry cleaning and meet my deadline and pay my rent. I'm not there yet. But I'm trying._

 

 

 

The last of winter rolls slowly into spring. Stories are there to be excavated and written; she does both. Sleep, she does less.

While she’s neck-deep in research on a slumlord in Norwood, her white roses shrivel to thorny brown stalks. She regrets it when she finally notices, but her hands move mechanically, her mind already returning to her half-composed article, and she tips the dirt and detritus into the recycling bin before rinsing out the pot and pulling out a clean dish towel.

Setting both on the counter, she checks an alert on her phone: several residents who were tight-lipped about connections to the mayor’s office may go on the record after all. She drops everything to meet up before they change their minds.

Eventually she forgets, and the flower pot becomes a fixture on her kitchen island, a holder for loose pens and her keys on nights when she stumbles in after sleeping at the office for a few days. Occasionally, she checks it for lost things.

 

 

 

_Wherever you are, I hope there’s fresh air and greenery. I like thinking you’re surrounded by things that are beautiful and alive._

 

 

 

It’s almost summer by the time Frank comes to see her, although the lingering daylight and the sweltering heat make it feel like mid-July. She falls into the typical busy New Yorker’s trap; the fickleness of the weather means she hasn’t hauled her A/C unit out of storage yet, thinking the coolness of the past few days would carry over for at least another week. Today, she’s paying for it. The sticky air sucks the fabric of her blouse and skirt to her skin with sweat before she’s even walked the three blocks to her apartment from the subway.

Karen changes out of her work clothes into shorts and a tank top, cursing all the while. She needs to find the key to her basement storage unit, which she’s been putting off. Opening her freezer for a blast of cold air, she also realizes with a pang of guilt that it’s been at least a month since she bought any food that wasn’t fast or delivered.

The front door was supposedly fixed months ago but now it sticks, forcing her to yank a few times before it opens. By then, she’s already sweating again, the inviting coolness of the building lobby far away behind a second set of double doors.

This is why she doesn’t notice him at first. Occupied with gathering up her damp hair and tying it in a knot, she’s already down the front steps of her building when she sees him on the sidewalk, wearing a dark jacket, jeans, and heavy boots despite the humidity.

When Frank turns to face her, he tenses like he might bolt. But his gaze lands and stays locked on hers, and she feels it as if he’d reached out and touched her.

There are so many things she doesn’t know if she’s even allowed to ask.

So she waits.

She’s used to thinking of him as all open seams, split knuckles, split lips, split scalp. He still is, in a way. The sight of him is a wound that won’t close. Yet there: callused but clean hands, hair grown just long enough to cover the gash at his temple, no bruises riding his cheekbones or fading to yellow.

He says his words carefully, like easing shrapnel from his body. “I, uh. Started goin’ to a group. To talk. About — about everything. Just came from there, actually.”

The surprise of hearing this collides with the shock of seeing him again, alive, waiting outside her building to tell her. She feels her throat tighten. “Oh.”

“You’re leaving. Is it a bad time?”

She feels herself shake her head. “I’m just going to the grocery store.” Before she can think, she adds, “Want to come?”

 

*

 

Karen holds a jar of pasta sauce, pretending to read the label while feeling increasingly aware of Frank’s solid presence behind her, not quite hovering but not unobtrusive either. He isn’t crowding her so much as he’s obviously _there._ She handed him the shopping basket at one point to give the sense that he has a purpose for being there other than following her around, which is slightly better.

He has just enough facial hair to not be immediately recognizable to others, but she still asks her questions cautiously. She can’t imagine how this looks and sounds to passersby.

“So… what do I call you?”

“In public? Pete’s fine.”

The word _public_ carries the shadow of the word _private_ , and Karen touches her free hand to her neck. “Pete. Okay. What are you doing for work?”

“I’m a part-time super in my building. Boxing gym also took me on as a trainer.”

“Don’t tell me they run a secret Fight Club on Thursdays.”

“Wednesdays, actually.”

She snorts, his familiar deadpan warming the conversation. “Well. As long as you’re not in the ring.”

“No, ma’am. I don’t fight unless I have a good reason.”

Setting down the jar, she looks at him. “Do you have one now?”

He looks her square in the eye. “Not like I used to. Not anymore.”

It’s as close as she’s gotten to confirmation that the Punisher is gone. And this is new, the deliberate way he talks now. Its center of gravity is different, not so much rattling stream-of-consciousness or guarded terseness. For the first time in a long while, Frank’s words aren’t wielded like a weapon, a blunt force meant to warn off or scare away. She believes them. That much, at least, hasn’t changed.

A corner of his mouth angles up, and she realizes it’s in response to the curve of her own.

Karen keeps walking, Frank close on her heels.

In the snacks aisle, he stops and picks up one of the half-cans of Pringles. Sour cream and onion. For a moment, he shifts it from palm to palm, rubbing a thumb across the name of the flavor on the label.

“Lisa used to crush these,” he says. “Used to come home after school and inhale a whole can. We started buyin’ these small ones to slow her down. Should’ve known she’d just tear through two of ‘em instead.”

Karen wants to reach for him, but she anchors her grip on the strap of her purse, studying his face.

“And Frank Junior?”

“Ah, same story, with cereal. Lucky Charms. He used to pick out all the marshmallows.”

She laughs. “Kid after my own heart.”

“They grew fast, even with all the crap I let them eat. Maria tried to make sure they ate right, but they knew I couldn’t say no to ‘em.” His grip on the can tightens, his head bowed. They stand like that for a few moments, allowing the memories to sit on their own.

“Frank.” Her voice is low so only he can hear it. He looks up. “It’s good that you remember. That you’re allowing yourself to.”

His jaw tightens, flexes as it works with effort to hold something in check.

And then, finally, he nods once at her, the gesture so small that anyone not paying attention would have missed it.

She nods back.

 

*

 

It’s not until later, back at her apartment after he’s insisted on carrying up and installing her A/C and they have beers in hand, that the other shoe finally drops and she says, “You could have called. Or written.”

“Yeah.” He tugs an ear, then puts his hand on the back of his neck. “I guess I should’ve, huh?”

“At least to let me know you were alive. I just—” She stops herself, realizing her hands have curled into fists.

“You’re pissed. You’re right to be pissed.”

“I’m not just pissed, I — it's been a shitty year, and I’ve already lost people who matter to me. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to add you to that count. And if you were alive, I didn’t want to blow your cover by prying, but if you weren’t…” The breath she inhales and exhales betrays her by shaking. She closes her eyes.

He covers her hand, his large, square fingers curling around hers. “I needed to figure out if there could be an end. If — if there was anything left. I know it was shitty; I know I probably didn’t do it right. But I didn’t know if I _could_ do it right. And you deserve that, Karen. After everything that happened, I didn’t want to come back if it meant making your life worse. Looks like I made it worse anyway.”

“You scared the hell out of me,” she says quietly.

“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

When he starts to pull his hand back, she catches it between both of hers and shakes her head. She meets his gaze.

“You scared me when you didn’t come back. That’s all.”

“Yeah?” His voice rasps more than usual.

“Yeah.”

She expects him to pull away or shift uncomfortably, but he doesn’t, his grip just as firm as hers.

So she says, “What did you do? While you were figuring it out.”

And he tells her. Sometimes in short bursts or with false starts, particularly when he mentions Curtis or the group. He’s renting a glorified broom closet in the Bronx. Lieberman’s still annoying as hell, but family dinners at his place on the Saturdays Frank doesn’t have to work are all right. Zach’s perfected his spiral, got a decent arm. He taught Leo how to throw a mean right hook. At some point, Karen lets go of him to grab fresh beers. When she comes back, he’s still sitting close.

Billy’s a new figure in his nightmares, but it still hurts like hell, how much he misses him. Or at least the version of Billy that was family. Took him the better part of four months to admit it, but Curtis was right about that never going away.

He opened a bank account as Pete Castiglione. Actually having something to put in it was surreal.

“So you could go anywhere,” Karen says, leaning back. “Homeland gave you enough cash to start over, totally clean slate.”

“Yeah, looks like. Or I could’ve; I gave most of it to Curtis. At least he knows what to do with it, you know? How to make it count, put it where it can do some good.”

He suddenly gains a lot of interest in the bottle cap of his beer, and she watches him for a moment.

“You know that means you’ve also done some real good, right? Don’t scoff. Frank, you _have_.”

“Bullshit. I just handed over some cash.”

“No, bullshit is you being failed by your superiors the way that you were. Bullshit is the fact that so many veterans don’t receive the care or resources they need once they’re discharged from service, that they’re left to fend for themselves when they need support the most.”

A rueful laugh. “That your next story?” His tone is teasing, but his voice drops as he starts spinning the cap between his fingers, and the way his throat bobs when he swallows makes her feel intensely protective, like she’s laid him bare and she’s the only one who can give him shelter. The truth is, she wouldn’t rule out writing an article, but she also doesn’t ever want to do anything that might run counter to that — to having his back, guarding his vulnerable spots.

“Just observations,” she says gently. When he doesn’t say anything, she adds, “So you’re not — you weren’t tempted to leave New York? A lot of people would have.”

He finally lifts his head. He leans forward, crossing his forearms on the table. “No. I live here.”

The way he says it sounds like it could mean more than one thing, especially while sitting in her kitchen. Especially when he’s looking at her the way he is now. The way he’s been looking this whole time whenever he focuses in on her, steady and still.

He slowly reaches up a hand and runs his thumb along the scar where the cut above her eyebrow used to be, the skin barely a shiny, pink ridge, but his eyebrows draw up as though the sight of it hurts him. Hurts _him._ She thinks about his own catalog of scars, the battlefield he’s made of his own body, and exhales a small breath, incredulous.

When they kiss, it’s as easy as tipping forward.

  

 

 

She comes home from work and the front door glides open when she pulls.

 

 

 

Frank doesn’t really have nicknames or terms of endearment for her (sometimes it even swings in the other direction, “Miss Page” working mainly because he’s growling it while covering her entire body with his), but Karen likes that. It’s the way he says her name, like he wants her to know that he sees her. He is always speaking to _her_.

He stays over more nights than he doesn’t and he still jerks awake in a cold sweat almost every other time, but she learns how to respond, how to give him what he needs, whether that’s space or warmth or her words, her voice unwavering in the dark.

Likewise, he learns how to cut her off from her laptop screen before one of her killer tension headaches starts, distracting her with dinner or a walk, or even his lips and teeth at her neck just below her jaw while his hand slides up her thigh. The most unfair thing he learns and takes advantage of, though, is how quickly she falls asleep to the sound of acoustic guitar playing, especially when she’s on deadline and she’s been awake for the better part of two days.

She never stops pursuing stories that need to be told. He never stops checking and clearing the shadows of anything that might be waiting for her.

She doesn’t leave the door hanging open, but she does give him a key.

 

 

 

If he goes before she wakes in the morning, he leaves her a note propped against a fresh bunch of flowers. The windowsill is filling up with them, mainly because her coffee table and nightstand are already full.

Today:

_Coffee’s in the pot. Be home at 6._


End file.
